


Good Day Sunshine (Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine...)

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen, I promise, Time Loop, but there's hope, hence the warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3277838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing that Antoine Triplett remembers is pain, sharp and sudden and radiating out from his chest until it's all he feels, all he sees, all he knows and he's splintering, he's fragmenting, he's falling apart and all he can think, before the Diviner claims his mind too, is <i>please let her be okay. </i></p><p>	Antoine Triplett wakes up.  He's in his bunk at the Playground and his alarm clock is blaring “Good Day Sunshine” (Skye programmed it once as a joke and he's never changed it back), and he thinks that something is very, very wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Day Sunshine (Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine...)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Groundhog Day, everyone!

The last thing that Antoine Triplett remembers is pain, sharp and sudden and radiating out from his chest until it's all he feels, all he sees, all he knows and he's splintering, he's fragmenting, he's falling apart and all he can think, before the Diviner claims his mind too, is _please let her be okay._

Antoine Triplett wakes up. He's in his bunk at the Playground and his alarm clock is blaring “Good Day Sunshine” (Skye programmed it once as a joke and he's never changed it back), and he thinks that something is very, very wrong. Because he remembers pain and desperation and Skye and he should be dead right now. And he's not. Maybe it's a dream, he thinks wildly. You always wake up before you die in dreams.

Then one of the Koenig brothers (he still can't tell them apart and it still weirds him out) knocks on his door and tells him that there's no time for his morning workout, that they need to go get Raina, and Trip leans over to look at his clock and check the date. He feels like he's been hit over the head with a ton of bricks. Because, in his dream, today was the day he died.

And, hours later, feeling the Diviner embed itself in his chest, he does.

Antoine Triplett wakes up. He's in his bunk at the Playground and his alarm clock is blaring “Good Day Sunshine” and he _knows_ that something is very, very wrong. This time he opens the door before Agent Koenig can get to it. “Don't tell me,” he says. “We have to go get Raina.”

Trip wonders if today, he can make things different. After they get Raina, he tells May that they need to take the tracer out and they do (it's bloody and messy and no one winces), but it's already too late. Just like the day before, and the day before that, the HYDRA jets arrive and surround them, and Ward takes Skye to meet her father, and they all end up falling into the City's orbit like meteorites doomed to burn up. And just like the day before and the day before that, he goes back down into the City to disable the charges and he goes into the temple to save Skye, because he'd try to save her a hundred times over, and he dies.

Antoine Triplett wakes up. He hits his alarm clock so hard that it goes skidding off the table and breaks into five separate pieces, and he wonders if this is someone's idea of a joke. He spends the next five days trying to change how it all happens—he changes the plane's flight path, he tries to convince May to lose HYDRA and drop Raina in an obscure region of Mongolia, he sabotages the charges while he's setting them, he physically drags Coulson back from the hole into the city. One day, he even tries to lock Skye inside her bunk, although he knows that she can take care of herself, knows that the girl's a fighter and that that's why he's crazy about her. And every day, it doesn't work. Somehow, HYDRA gets to them, Ward gets to Skye, Skye gets to the City, and the Diviner gets to him.

The eighth time that he repeats the day he dies, he thinks maybe that Skye's supposed to be...transformed. That the Diviner's meant to do whatever it does to her (he's never lived long enough to see what that is) and that maybe all he's supposed to do is survive. So, on the ninth day, he breaks his own wrist in Vancouver, slamming it against a table, and May makes him stay on the Bus once they get to San Juan. When he drifts off, pumped full of tranquilizers, he's praying that it works.

Antoine Triplett wakes up. He's in his bunk at the Playground and his alarm clock is blaring “Good Day Sunshine” and he wonders if he'll spend the rest of his life living (and dying) the same day over and over again. He wonders if that counts as any kind of life. And, after a while, listening to his alarm clock play through _Revolver_ twice, staring up at his ceiling and trying not to think about Skye, he decides that it'll have to. 

So Trip gets up and he dies. Over and over again. Some days he tries not to, if he's feeling particularly quixotic. Some days, he tells people all the things he's ever wanted to say—he tells May, when she looks worried and worn, that she picked her team for a reason and that it was a good one; he tells Coulson how glad he is that the Director turned out to not be crazy; he tells Skye that she is brave and strong and hilarious and one of the best teammates he's ever had (he holds back the beautiful that's waiting on the tip of his tongue). One day, he even locks Fitz and Simmons in a room together, in the early hours of the morning when they're both up working, and tells them to talk. He waits outside for three and a half hours and when they finally emerge, they're both blushing slightly and (for the day at least), Trip lets himself be proud. He doesn't even point out that Fitz missed a button. Trip does that a few more times, on the days when he feels himself fraying and thinning, when he'd give anything to be able to go forward. On the kind of days when he needs to remember that he can do something good, no matter how temporary it is.

He doesn't remember how many days it's been when he decides to ask the smartest person (technically, people) he knows for help. He goes to where Fitz and Simmons are sitting on opposite sides of the room, waiting to leave for Puerto Rico and determinedly not talking, and he tells them that he thinks he's stuck in a time loop, that the only day he lives is the day that he dies. Simmons goes very pale and quiet, then hugs him tightly and whispers that she's sorry into his ear. Fitz gives him a weird sort of handshake arm-clasp thing, that Trip can feel his hand trembling through. Then almost (but not quite) in unison, they take a deep breath and he watches something switch inside their heads, the scientists taking over from his friends. Fitz and Simmons both start talking at the same time, then stop, then each claim that the other one needs to go first and talk over each other again. They're trying very hard not to be, but they're a little too excited about all of it.

“Maybe there's something that the universe wants you to do?” Simmons asks eagerly. “That it needs you to do?”

“You've already tried n—n-not dying, right?” Fitz says.

“I've tried everything,” Trip shrugs. “I've changed everything that I could possibly think of, done almost everything I've ever thought I should do and didn't

“Almost everything?” Simmons is giving him her “I have two Phds and I can tell if you lie to me because I'm a genius” look.

“I've never kissed Skye,” he mumbles. “But I think the universe has bigger things to deal with.”

“The universe wants you to g-get the...the...” Fitz snaps his fingers, looking for the word.

“The girl. Even if you kind of die afterward.” Simmons winces. 

The universe has pretty screwed up priorities. That's what Trip thinks as he runs through the City, gasping for breath, and throws himself through the doors of the temple before they close. “What are you doing here?” Skye asks, eyes wide and horrified.

“Came to get you,” he says and steps towards her. “I always will, I swear. As long as you want me to.” There isn't time to tell her any of the million different ways that he feels about her, how completely and utterly he respected her even before he fell for her, how he knows that she'll get through whatever's coming after he's gone, how he believes in her in every way, and how, in another time and place, he thinks that he might have fallen madly in love with her. That they might have had lazy Sunday mornings eating pancakes and bacon, and family dinners with his grandad insisting on showing her every last piece of gear from his Howling Commando days, and days and days where being with her was just as easy as breathing in and out.

So Trip kisses her instead, fierce and sweet and steady, knowing that it's the only chance he'll ever get, and she kisses him back like she knows it too and he thinks that as far as first and last kisses go, this is a pretty damn good one. He holds on to Skye as she turns into stone in his arms, and then he shuts his eyes and waits for the inevitable end.

There's no pain this time, no sharp shock from the Diviner digging into his skin and claiming him for its own. There's just the feeling of something crumbling against his skin, a shaking that echoes through his bones, but this time it's not him that's crumbling. He can hear things falling all around him, stones clattering to the ground, and whatever that thing did, it's tearing the temple down and he wonders if he can get her out of here before he dies again. Then he feels something brush against his shoulder and he opens his eyes to see Skye staring at him and all he can think is that she's okay, and, no matter what happens to him now, he's grateful for that. “You're alive,” he whispers.

“So are you,” she whispers back. “You kissed me.”

“I wanted to,” he tells her. It's then that the first part of her sentence hits him. He's alive. Somehow, the impossible has happened and he's still alive. He's living a part of this day that he's never lived before and maybe that means that, when he next wakes up, he'll get to live a morning that he's never lived before. Trip wants to cry, or laugh, or kiss her again, but all he can do is grab on to Skye's hand, as she tells him that they have to get out of here, and follow where she leads.

Trip looks at her, strong and broken and kind of perfect, and he tells the universe _thank you_. And he smiles, because sometimes you have to make your own kind of sunshine, and he thinks that maybe tomorrow, he'll hear a different song when he wakes up.

And together they walk out of the city, through the darkness and into the light.


End file.
